The best mobile game ever
By Simon Bisson & Mary Branscombe in Editorial
Posted in Toys & gadgets, Futures, Windows Mobile, Hardware, HP, Wireless, Mobile on
It’s dark. The South Bank is brightly lit, but Jubilee Gardens is a dark stretch of grass between the London Eye and the road, with only an avenue of trees garlanded with fairy lights for illumination. And there’s five of us with one iPAQ Traveller, one camera, one backup set of paper instructions, three GPS-labelled mole holes and ten moles to whack. And we’ve forgotten which hole is which. Is this the future of mobile gaming? I hope so, because it’s huge fun.
The London Girl Geek Dinners are a mobile feast, meeting wherever the technology company sponsoring the evening suggests. This time it was upstairs at the British Film Institute, and the serious business of the evening was Helen Vaid, managing director of HP’s Snapfish photo printing service in Europe talking about being an entrepreneur and balancing that with working for a large company and Jo Reid of HP’s Bristol research labs talking about some of the projects she’s worked on, including mscape.
Reid has a vision of pervasive computing overlaying a digital layer on the world around us. Geotagging is one way to do it, but that’s after the fact and away from the place. Geocaching is another, but the GPS is a tool that you use like a map rather than part of the fun. Short for Mediscape, mscapes are games, stories and guides triggered by your location; they run on an iPAQ Traveller, which is a Windows Mobile 5 device with a built-in GPS - so it knows when you’re in the right place to give you clues, directions and instructions and when to record your score. Think scavenger hunt or virtual hide and seek
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Loading ...Comment by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe - November 15, 2007 on 9:22 pm
As one of the other players, I have to say, it was a fun way of exploring the South Bank area, learning new things, and getting to know new people. An ideal team bonding exercise, I suspect!
Comment by Dave Eff - November 21, 2007 on 11:40 am
Sounds fun - in the old days we used to do the same with clues in jam-jars. At least this way no one can change the clue! DaveF http://www.itpro.co.uk/blogs/user-blogs/dave-f/
Comment by Simon Bisson and Mary Branscombe - November 21, 2007 on 12:07 pm
and you have have lots of different people without needing a different jamjar for each group 
-M
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